Monthly Archives: July 2017

Outgoing White House press secretary Sean Spicer has criticized the notorious parody of him by Saturday Night Live comedian Melissa McCarthy as “over the line.” “I think that there were parts of it that were funny, but there’s a lot of it that was over the line,” Spicer told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Friday. Hours…

We all know first impressions are highly influential, despite being told not to judge a book by its cover. A person’s face can reveal a wealth of information ranging from their personality to their health. Now, researchers at the University of Toronto suggest social class can be accurately predicted by looking at someone’s neutral facial expression.…

A few weeks ago, 2 weeks to be precise, as I don’t write very much anymore, I did something that I had never done before.

That was to sell positions in order to raise cash.

The positions that I sold, weren’t in my usual “covered option” portfolio. They were all uncovered index funds that I had held for quite a while and had some nice long-term profits on them, as they just went along for a long market ride.

2 weeks ago on a day that the DJIA went about 144 points higher, I sold 50% of those accumulated shares.

I did so because I saw nothing to warrant the belief that we were heading even higher, at least not for a basket of stocks kind of portfolio.

Individual names, maybe. A basket? Not so much.

But, I did so with the intention of going back in with the cash to buy once again, although not all at once if the S&P 500 had retraced a mere 3% or so.

In those 2 weeks, the portfolio that held those index funds outperformed the S&P 500 by 0.5%, partly because the S&P 500 fell about 0.1% in that time period.

Yesterday, on the heels of a 130 point gain in the DJIA, I sold the remaining 50% of those index fund shares. read more

Don’t think about it too much. That’s my advice. Yes, as you read this, the federal government remains a hot tub gurgling a witch’s brew of dysfunction and malice. Yes, the president is still tweeting insults at television hosts while his administration works to perhaps suppress voters and leave tens of millions of people without health… read more